This invention pertains to roofing materials or other building materials normally employed as cover materials prior to the installation of roofing shingles or external building finish siding and more specifically to such cover materials incorporating therein a plurality of integrally formed nail tabs.
A shingle roof installation generally comprises at least two distinctive layers. The first layer is an underlayment, usually a saturated asphalt material that attaches directly to the plywood sheets or board material that supports the shingles. The second layer is made up of the shingles themselves. Normally, the underlayment assists in making the roof resistant to water intrusion. The starting material for the underlayment is a base material usually referred to as xe2x80x9cdry feltxe2x80x9d. Examples of types of dry felt starting material are rag, paper and fiberglass, which is not exhaustive of possible starting base materials. The starting base material that has actually been subject to experimentation is a fibrous paper made from treating recyclable cardboard; however, this invention is not limited thereto. The term xe2x80x9cdry feltxe2x80x9d used herein is used generically for all suitable starting base material. Dry felt material when saturated with an asphalt material produces an underlayment roofing material known in the trade as xe2x80x9ctar paperxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9csaturated feltxe2x80x9d, which is produced in various grades depending on thickness and weight.
Regardless of the type of underlayment roofing material that has been employed, common practice in the installation industry has been to unroll a length of the underlayment material and affix each length to the support sheets or boards at a plurality of locations so that it stays in place prior to the installation of the covering shingles. The affixing or fastening devices for this material are generally staples and nails. Staples and regular nails are readily applied by power devices; however, both are notoriously susceptible to either pulling out of the sheets or boards when there is an uplift on the underlayment or, when the staples or nails stay in place, tearing of the roofing material at the fastening locations. Even when shingling is to follow immediately, the underlayment can still be exposed alone to windy and other adverse conditions, such as when the installers walk or crawl on the underlayment.
Moreover, it is desirable that the underlayment be securely attached independently of the shingles not only in the pre-shingling stage of installation, but also in the final installation. This is because shingles do get blown or ripped off under adverse weather conditions and a securely independently installed underlayment will provide some interim protection from the weather elements prior to roof repair. When the underlayment is not securely fastened, then the underlayment may be blown away or ripped concurrently with shingle damage.
To securely install the underlayment and avoid the tearing described above, it has long been a common practice to either use roofing nails with large heads or to use an auxiliary large washer or tab that lies underneath the nail head. Such large washer or tab successfully resists being torn through as with a smaller nail head of regular size. The use of such washer or tab has not been totally satisfactory, however, since such use is time consuming, somewhat expensive, and can be somewhat dangerous when the installation is on a fairly steeply pitched roof and/or the conditions are inclement. This is because it requires two hands to either slip the washer over the nail or to hold a tab down while driving the nail through. If the installer is having to reach while only supporting himself or herself on a toeboard, it may be uncomfortable and/or unstable to be unable to use either hand for additional support when necessary. Moreover, nails with large, unconventional heads are not recommended both because they are expensive and because they cannot be used in ordinary power equipment. ordinarily, power equipment for driving nails can be loaded only with standard nail cartridges.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,365,709, commonly owned herewith, describes an improved underlayment roofing material that includes a plurality of suitable nail tabs attached to a felt base. The concept therein described was to produce a roll of underlayment that had the tabs in place so that the installer would not have to separately handle a washer or a separated tab and nail. With the tabs in place, the installer would merely target the tabs one by one with a conventional power driven nail gun. Such installation would be many times faster than installations previously described and would be less cumbersome to the installer since the nailing process would not require both hands when a nail gun is used. However, the underlayment therein described has not been used commercially. To make a dry felt material with glued-on tabs, as described in the ""709 patent, into saturated felt material requires the adhesive and the tab material to not materially degrade during the asphalt saturation process. The high temperature of this process and the rollers used tend to either melt the adhesive glue, melt the tab material itself, scrape off the tabs, or a combination of all three, any of which renders the resulting saturated felt material unreliable, if not unsuited, for commercial use.
It has been discovered, as hereinafter described, that tabs can be permanently and reliably affixed or bonded to saturated felt material avoiding many of the problems attendant to affixing tabs to the dry felt base material as described in the ""709 patent. Moreover, it has been discovered that the process of producing suitable tabs onto saturated felt material can be automated using liquid thermoplastic tab material that quickly solidifies and adheres or bonds to the surface of the saturated felt material.
Also, importantly, it has been discovered that the production of tabs onto the saturated felt material can be done immediately following the step of dipping or spraying the dry felt material with a suitable hot asphalt mix to make saturated felt material. Thus, the conversion of dry felt to saturated felt can be combined in an automated process with the subsequent production of the tabs.
In addition to saturated felt material used in a roofing application, suitable tabs can also be similarly installed using liquid thermoplastic tab material to other base sheeting materials, such as siding materials used for wrapping the side of a framed house or other structure prior to securing the finish siding.
Therefore, it is a feature of the present invention to provide an improved sheeting material having nail tabs produced directly onto at least one of its surfaces.
It is another feature of the present invention to provide an improved underlayment roofing material incorporating nail tabs therein that are tough and compliant that are produced directly on saturated felt material.
It is yet another feature of the present invention to provide such an underlayment roofing material incorporating nail tabs therein that are of a material that is reliable when used in the extremes of ambient temperature conditions encountered in typical installations.
It is still another feature of the present invention to provide an improved underlayment roofing material utilizing an automated process for applying a liquid thermoplastic material at appropriate tab positions using nozzles that are readily programmably controlled.
It is yet another feature of the present invention to provide an improved underlayment material, wherein the overall process is continuous and automated to include the saturation of dry felt material to make saturated felt material followed by the production of suitable nail tabs from pressurized liquid thermoplastic-based or other material that subsequently hardens and securely bonds to the surface of the saturated felt material.
A composite roofing material is made starting with a roll of dry felt material. In the preferred method of producing the underlayment roofing material in accordance with this invention, the dry felt material is introduced to the beginning of a continuous and automated process having a system of driven rollers for transporting the roofing material through the process. First, the dry felt material undergoes treatment in conventional fashion to produce asphalt saturated felt material from the dry felt material. Then, a suitable liquid thermoplastic-based or other material is deposited on the rapidly moving saturated felt using appropriately positioned nozzles or nozzle sets. The on/off operation of the nozzles or nozzle sets and the movement of the saturated felt material are respectively controlled and coordinated by one or more suitable programmable microprocessors. The thermoplastic-based material may include an appropriate adhesive to ensure that it bonds to the surface of the saturated felt material as it rapidly cools and hardens to form the desired nail pads or tabs. The thermoplastic-based material may be reinforced with fibers, flakes or other similar particles, and such material may also include a color contrasting dye to that of the underlying saturated felt material, which is normally black. Even without an added dye, however, the tabs do contrast in color and are readily visible.
By the time the saturated felt material with tabs reaches a xe2x80x9cfree looperxe2x80x9d stage, the tabs are sufficiently cooled and hardened to operational conditions. That is, they are tough, but flexible. The free looper is followed by a final stage, where the underlayment material with tabs is wound to make up standard sized rolls. The free looper allows this action to occur without impacting on the prior continuous movement of the conveyed saturated felt during the foregoing tab producing stage of the operation.
As mentioned, the final resulting composite roofing material just described is manufactured using a machine that includes one or more depositing nozzles at each row location. The liquid thermoplastic-based or equivalent material is normally supplied to the depositing nozzles under pressure. The nozzles are turned on and then off to deposit the material in the correct quantity and at the correct spacing, which preferably staggers the tabs across the width of the base felt material. The line speed of conveyance determines, through the operation of a microprocessor, the durations of both the xe2x80x9conxe2x80x9d time and the xe2x80x9coffxe2x80x9d time.
Each xe2x80x9cnozzlexe2x80x9d used for making the deposits is preferably either a plurality of closely spaced orifices in a common manifold housing or an elongated slit opening so as to cover a wide enough area for making tabs of the preferred width dimension without forming a tab that is too thick. When a plurality of orifices are employed, the liquid material flowing from the individual orifices blends together, cools and hardens to form the individual tabs.